Re: Editors: Follett/Wensberg "Modern American Usage"

[Robert Hemenway robhem@xxxxxxxx]

At 02:51 PM 9/1/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Eric Van T. asks about Wilson Follett's _Modern American
>Usage._ I am perfectly delighted to hear that a revised
>version is out. I have long been recommending the 1966
>original above others of its ilk to undergraduates who care
>about their writing and to graduate students beginning
>dissertations.

Compare the revision of Follett's _Modern American Usage_ with the
original before you decide to recommend it. For me, the original is the
better book, though I have my reservations about that as well.

For students, the revision may be right. Wensberg has simplified
Follett's language (dumbed it down, I'd say). And he's added quite
a few strictures and caveats of his own. The heart of Follett, though,
is still there.

I now prefer to consult Webster's Dictionary of English Usage and
Burchfield's recent revision of Fowler. But perhaps students profit from
manuals that are much more firmly prescriptive than these two. I
would certainly tell my best students to go to the descriptive books--
Webster and the Burchfield Fowler. For a prescriptive manual,
Strunk & White should be enough.

Oh, there's another little book I like a good deal--_Clear and Simple as
the Truth: Writing Classic Prose_, by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark
Turner (Princeton, 1994). There may be a pb out by now.

Them's my sentiments. I went on about the Follett revision at greater
length to Van Tassel directly, since he and I both had a particular interest
in it--I'd worked on a draft of the ms. a couple of years ago. Saw no
reason to clutter up the traffic here.


Regards,


Robert Hemenway